Talk:2MinuteTimer

From 43FoldersWiki

( A note to remind RobertBrook to try to write this app! ) --RB 05:00, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

I'm working on this now: a toy Realbasic app that has some - but not all - of the features mentioned. --RB 17:46, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

[edit] Original article contents

Main article page cut & reorganised, orginal contents copied here --Lelia 03:58, 23 May 2005 (EDT)

2MinuteTimer From 43FoldersWiki

I use a small toy egg-timer that approximately lasts 2 minutes whenever I'm about to embark on anything that I believe will take only 2 minutes... so that I'll know next time what 2 minutes really feels like. Unfortunately, most of these 2-minute tasks are on the computer, so my eyes often stay glued to the screen, and I don't notice that the egg-timer is done.

I want a timer that sits either at the top or the bottom of the screen, all the way across the screen, probably in transparent overlay, that responds to a keyboard shortcut of my choosing to start and stop it, and it will time one or more pre-designated intervals. (Maybe 2 minutes and 15 minutes) The a colored bar can slowly crawl across the screen, to give me peripheral-vision feedback on how I'm doing, and tastefully "ding" when my 2 minutes are up.

Not sure how tasteful it is ;) but I use Pester by Nicholas Riley (on this page (http://web.sabi.net/nriley/software/); scroll down). Very simple/barebones and therefore spiffy. ;) --RobertDaeley 19:22, 22 Mar 2005 (EST)

I have a script at work based on the sleep and echo commands. sleep 120 would be to sleep for 120 seconds and then an echo statement with the warning bell.

hm, you could have the script do

sleep 120; say "Your two minutes are up."

so you don't even have to have a warning bell.

"If you use a terminal a lot, use:

sleep 120 && say "Your two minutes are up." &

and this tidbit goes into the background and you get your command line back. (In a nut shell, the && says, "if the first command executes successfully, execute the second." --sglink 20:43, 24 Mar 2005 (CST)"

You may want to try this free utility. It is not a timer - but rather an onscreen stopwatch which you can move into your line of vision. "DSclock (http://www.dualitysoft.com/dsclock/index.html)" is a floating clock which you can customize with your color, font and formatting preferences; synchronize to the time server of your choice (I have mine set for MIT) and set the alarm to sound in your preferred manner (I have mine set to the Westminister Chimes) on a schedule of your choice. Mine chimes every qtr hour,in theory this keeps me from losing track of time while online - in practice I sometime tune out the chime, but I could increase the volumne. Right click on the floating time bar, and you have a nifty stopwatch feature which floats to whereever you want it to be on the screen. Place the stopwatch in your line of vision - and you'll see when 2 minutes is up. One unfortunate caveat - it's for windows. When I make my planned switch to Mac I'll miss it. I added this tidbit for any windows users who won't be able to use "pester" Susan

Another possibility is to use the Timer plugin for Quicksilver. It allows you to assign a length for the timer and a message. If you wanted, you could even assign it to a trigger. Depending on whether you're using Growl you'll get the popup window or a nice customizable message. -- Emily

[edit] Whoops

Arg, just noticed needn't have bother with the re-edit as there is already a much better page at Timers. Live & learn. --Lelia 04:08, 23 May 2005 (EDT)